The passage wound here and there, and sometimes the children had to step over rocks and piles of fallen earth. Tree-roots stretched over their heads now and again. The passage was sometimes very narrow, but quite passable. And at last it ended - and Jack found that it led to an even larger cave right in the very middle of the hill itself! He lifted his lantern and looked round. The air smelt fresh and sweet. Why was that?
“Look!” cried Nora, pointing upwards. “I can see daylight!”
Sure enough, a long way up, a spot of bright daylight came through into the dark cave. Jack was puzzled. “I think some rabbits must have burrowed into the hill, and come out unexpectedly into this cave,” he said. “And their hole is where we can see that spot of daylight. Well - the fresh air comes in, anyhow!”
From the big cave a low passage led to another cave on the right. This passage was so low that the children had to crawl through it - and to their surprise they found that this second cave led out to the hillside itself, and was no other than the cave into which it was so hard to crawl because of the small entrance.
“Well, we are getting on,” said Jack. “We have discovered that the big cave we knew leads by a passage to an even bigger one - and from that big one we can get into this smaller one, which has an opening on to the hillside - and that opening is too small for any grown-up to get into!”
“What about the cave we put the hens into?” asked Nora.
“That must be just a little separate cave by itself,” said Jack. “We’ll go and see.”
So they squeezed themselves out of the tiny entrance of the last cave, and went to the hen-cave. But this was quite ordinary - just a little low, rounded cave smelling strongly of bats.
They came out and sat on the hillside in the bright sunshine. It was lovely to sit there in the warmth after the cold, dark caves.
“Now listen,” said Jack thoughtfully. “Those caves are going to be jolly useful to us this summer if anyone comes to get us. We could get Daisy into that big inner cave quite well, for one thing.”